Mary Hemingway struck Castro as a bizarre, poorly chosen woman for the great Papa.
Sensing motion behind him, Castro turned. Smiling at the foreigner, Castro fired up a fresh cigar. He gestured with his cigar at the little blond woman bustling around, supervising the loading of the precious boxes; directing the burning of her husband’s papers. “I suppose you have plans for those containers, too, eh, comrade?”
The man, this “Creedy,” smiled and said, “In time, certainly, Jefe. Papa loved your country very much. It’s important his readers see some of his writings in those boxes, so they, too, can see how much Papa loved Cuba. Particularly how much he thought of you, Jefe.” Inside, Creedy was cursing himself. If he’d only gotten here sooner — gotten first access to all these manuscripts squirreled away in various Cuban safe deposit boxes.
Castro grinned and hefted the ornate shotgun Mary had gifted him. He said, “She is nice, si?”
Creedy didn’t really know guns — not his weapons of choice. Winking, Creedy accepted a cigar. He leaned in for a light from one of Castro’s lice-ridden stooges. It grated to have to be deferential to this son of a rich plantation owner now playing the role of revolutionary, but Creedy managed a short, “It’s swell, Jefe.”
* * *
Standing on the tarmac of the Miami Airport, Creedy wiped fresh sweat from his forehead. Like Cuba, south Florida was sweltering. Creedy cursed and waved his men away.
Airports were a vexed fixture in his life: More gambits and schemes had been saved by a hasty flight out of some theatre of operation or blown to pieces on tarmacs, runways and concourses than he cared to count. Seemed he was forever checking mirrors and over his shoulder every time he crossed a frontier, his stomach in knots; always waiting for some ticket taker to say, “So sorry, Mr. Creedy, but there seems to be a problem...”
And how many running from him had Creedy managed to ensnare at passport desks and ticket counters? Dozens, at least. There’d be dozens more, he was sure.
This time, the system was working against Creedy, threatening to slide this gambit over into his airports-of-the-world loss tally.
Creedy had hoped to get some time alone with the Hemingway manuscript boxes when they reached Miami, but the indomitable little widow was standing guard over them like some goddamn bottle-blond sentry, ordering around airport staff and staying constantly in sight of the precious containers as they were loaded in the plane’s cargo hold.
Mary might have unwittingly beaten him in Cuba, and beaten him in Miami, but if that toad Hoover back in D.C. went for Creedy’s pitch, he figured he’d yet carry the day. After all, what was this boozy widow really, when ranged against a man of his talents and dark imagination?
* * *
The Topping House was bound in the season’s first mountain snow.
In the storeroom of the Idaho house where Papa had found the shotgun that killed him, Mary stared at the boxes and shopping bags full of priceless manuscripts arrayed around her.
She fingered the key to the storeroom, now worn on a chain around her neck where it would always be safe. Mary looked around at the small room — its locks fortified at a time when she was still trying to keep her suicidal husband from his guns.
It was a good and safe place.
Mary turned her attention back to the manuscripts, thinking of the enormous job and responsibility before her. Knuckling down to the grand task, the thought made her smile — she’d been preparing for this for years.
BOOK ONE:
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
(Idaho, 1965)
“God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won’t even whore. They’re all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they’re all camp followers.”
— Ernest Hemingway
Chapter 1
HANNAH
“The house where he died. Call it the scene of the crime.”
The scholar and his pregnant, newly wed Scottish wife walked along the berm, spooking some crows pecking at the bloated carcass of a black dog killed crossing U.S. Highway 75.
The scavengers scattered in a flurry of wings and reeling shadows and high-pitched shrieks, beaks dangling remnants of rotting flesh and pelt matted with dried blood. The big blue-black crows came to roost on a wire, cawing and flapping their wings at the academic and his bride peering at the house.
Richard Paulson pointed at the brown house with the three green garage doors. The home that was once known as the Topping House was surrounded by pines and fronted a bare, cloud-shadowed hill and another dense with pine trees.
“It’s attractive,” Hannah Paulson said, her voice a husky burr. She pushed her sunglasses back on her head. “Seems right for him. Rugged and handsome; built from the materials at hand.”
Richard shook his head at his wife’s assessment. “From here it looks good enough, sure. By all accounts, it’s something else up close.”
Hem’s house that looked like alpine wood construction was actually fabricated from poured concrete, stained brown and molded to resemble timber. They were the same construction techniques used at the Sun Valley Lodge, where the Paulsons had had lunch. One of Hem’s sons, Gregory, bitterly described the concrete house as a fortification fit for the paranoid man Greg’s father had allegedly been at the end.
Hem’s last wife, Mary, declared the house “depressing” shortly before she and Hem moved in during an October day in 1959.
“They say Mary will be moving soon,” Richard said. “Mary’s lived here on and off since the day he died. Aaron says she may move to New York. Word is she’s mostly drunk these days. She talks of leaving the property to the Nature Conservancy. The home and fourteen acres of surrounding ground would be declared a preserve in Papa’s name if Mary did that.”
Hannah stroked her blond hair behind her ears and wrinkled her nose. “How can Mary stand to live there after...? To have to step over the spot where he blew his brains out every time she passes through that entryway? It’s unthinkable.”
“For you, sure. You’re using yourself as a yardstick for Mary. The two of you are nothing alike.”
Richard squeezed his wife’s hand, the two small diamonds in Hannah’s wedding band and ring — the fourth pair of bands he had bought in his life — digging into his palm in a freshly unfamiliar way. “I just can’t believe anybody before me hasn’t seen it the way it must have been,” Richard said. “I can’t believe it took me so long to see it truly.”
“And how exactly was it, Richard? You’ve been cagey about all of this. What’s your scheme? Ready at last to share?”
Richard fingered the vial in his pocket — the mysterious drug given him by that man. He hated to throw in with their lot. Every scrap of his spirit and intellect rebelled against it. Still, in the service of a righteous cause...
This time, at least, Richard was on the side of the angels. He was sure of that. The ends, he comforted himself again, more than justified these dark means.
He said, “The famous suicide is nothing but a myth, Hannah. I know it. I think the old bitch killed her husband. I think Mary murdered poor sick Papa. Blew the ailing son of a bitch away with his own shotgun.”
Learn more about PRINT THE LEGEND at:
http://craigmcdonaldbooks.com/
Print the Legend
Craig McDonald
ISBN 978-0-312-55437-8
ONE TRUE SENTENCE
Hector Lassiter returns in ONE TRUE SENTENCE, the fourth novel in the Edgar-/Anthony-nominated Hector Lassiter series (available in eBook format).
Paris, 1924: Hector Lassiter, crime novelist and best friend of Ernest Hemingway, is crossing the Pont Neuf when he hears a body fall into the Seine, the first in a string of brutal murders that befall literary magazine editors on both banks of the City of Lights. Eager to solve the mystery, Gertrude Stein gathers the most prominent crime and mystery writers in the city, including Hector an
d the dark and intriguing mystery novelist Brinke Devlin. Soon, Hector and Brinke are tangled not only under the sheets but in a web of murders, each more grisly than the next, and Hemingway, Hector, and Brinke have to scramble to find the killer before they become the next victims.
Excerpt:
ONE TRUE SENTENCE
By
Craig McDonald
© 2011, Craig McDonald
PARIS:
FEBRUARY 1924
“It is the fate of every myth to creep by degrees into the narrow limits of some historical reality, and to be treated by some later generations as a unique fact with historical claims.”
— Nietzsche
Snow falling on the Seine.
It was half-past-two and it was quiet as it gets with the heavy-falling snow and Hector was just starting to cross the Pont Neuf, heading home after a long night of writing. He was alone and cold and slightly drunk.
Icy fog crawled across the river. The lights of the bridge glowed strangely in the fog, not illuminating anything, but instead casting hazy, solitary cones of weak light that receded off into the cold mist.
From the other end of the bridge, much farther than Hector could see, he heard a scream, then the sound of the rubbery, thin ice breaking below...water splashing.
Hector called, “Hey there!” and began running, his leather soles slipping and sliding on the slick bricks. Hector thought he heard other feet hitting the pavers.
He crossed the bridge, knowing he’d passed the halfway point when the grade changed. Hector ran to the spot where he thought he’d heard the splash and leaned out over the stone rail, peering into the fog. Squinting, Hector could see a black patch below — standing out against the thin veil of snow covering the iced-over surface of the river. Wisps of steam from the warmer water trapped beneath the ice drifted from the black spot, curling into the mists of the fog. Hector watched a few moments, waiting to see if there was any sign of motion from the hole, but he saw nothing like that.
A suicide, probably...there was never any shortage of those.
He looked at the steps leading down to the river’s edge. The bridge’s lights glowed meanly across the slick steps. And if he got down there without falling, Hector knew he’d still be faced with just that hole in the ice. The current would likely have already swept whatever — whomever — had gone through dozens of yards from the steaming hole.
Reluctantly, Hector backed away from the railing. He decided going to the authorities would do little good. And doing that might just make Hector a fleeting suspect if they fished a body from the river later, after the thaw.
There were fresh footprints in the thin crust of snow...spaced far apart, like the person who left them was running. The weight of the impact on the hard snow made the size and the shape of the footprints indistinct...impossible to tell if they were those of a man or a woman.
He looked around again; saw nothing; heard nothing. He thought about trying to follow the footprints in the snow, then decided against it.
Hector shook loose a cigarette and struck a match with his thumbnail. He pulled his collar up higher and tighter around his face and jammed his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat, continuing his solitary way home.
By morning he’d nearly forgotten about all of it.
COVEN
They were gathered in a private room off the back of a café called the Grand Néant.
The speaker wearing the black mask surveyed them sitting there, sipping their wine or anise: gaunt, intent-eyed men whom the self-dubbed “Nobodaddy” — a moniker borrowed from the poet William Blake — had personally selected as likely converts.
Dark men with darker sensibilities. Cynical vets, jaded rich boys, and bitter men who viewed life after the trenches and horrors of the World War as a gauntlet — a thing to tear pleasure from at any cost and with no eye toward consequences.
Fellow travelers.
A lost generation. Prospects. Worthy candidates for Nobodaddy’s dark campaign.
Nobodaddy said, “As a movement — as an organized entity — we can impose our artistic and philosophical vision on the world. Here, in the City of Lights, we stand at the center of the beating heart of the arts. Every writer, painter, and poet of consequence is right here. If we seize control here in Paris, our vision, our artistic aesthetic, can be carried forth to the world.”
The German — the tall dark one with the hawk nose and the terrible scar down the side of his face — shook his head. Werner Höttl said, “Your aesthetic. Your artistic vision. For surely, it is not mine. You embrace nihilism...wallow in your concept of nothingness and the futility of life. Insofar as you dismiss religion, I applaud you. Particularly because the artistic community of this city is too in thrall to the Jew. But my medium is film, and film is a communal experience. It can elevate an audience. A master filmmaker can make an auditorium of strangers feel the same things...react the same way. All you offer is sterile, black loneliness. This does not appeal to me.”
Höttl studied the speaker in the black mask again. He was still trying to decide it if was a man or a woman. The voice was odd...rather androgynous.
The other dark-haired, hawk-faced one — Donovan Creedy — cleared his throat and nodded. “Herr Höttl is right about the Jews and the way they’re poisoning and warping the artistic scene in this city. They run all the little magazines. Their salons are hives of indoctrination to their vision of the arts. I’m all for grounding out their influence. But I don’t see how your campaign in any way enhances the prospects for our artistic success. Your vision of Nada renders life meaningless. If you have your way, everyone will be throwing themselves out windows or under trains. They’ll be drinking poison and shooting themselves in the head to escape the barren world you’ve handed them. I want no part of this.”
Creedy rose, putting on his hat and scooping up his overcoat from the back of his chair. The German, Höttl, also stood, said, “I’ll follow you out, Herr Creedy.”
Dejected, Nobodaddy looked to the young critic — handsome, tow-headed...a trust fund baby. “And you, Quentin?”
The art critic blew twin streams of smoke out his nostrils and shrugged. “What can I say? Either you aren’t a good ambassador for your cause, or your aims are simply unfathomable to anyone who is remotely sane. All I’ve heard is an argument for the meaninglessness of all human effort...all artistic endeavor.”
Quentin ground out the stub of his cigarette; lit another. He said, “I’ll confess, I have artistic ambitions myself. Until I get a better handle on how I mean to realize them, I’m furthering my own education under the cloak of art criticism. From where I sit, you and your group — if it extends beyond yourself — are at odds with my interests. Hell, if everyone starts believing as you do, nobody will be painting, writing novels or poetry...writing plays. Hell, as those two odd birds who just cleared out said, all the artists who fall for your pitch will be too busy killing themselves to create.”
Quentin Windly stood up, stretched, and said, “Afraid I’m going to take the air, too. Thanks for the drinks. I was you, I’d try drinking more myself. Maybe it’ll change your black state of mind. Oh, and lose the mask — it doesn’t engender trust. Hell, it makes you seem, you know, insane.”
Nobodaddy had used the name “Elrond Huppert” — a fanciful alias he’d partly borrowed from a Leeds professor named Tolkien — when he’d solicited their participation; he hadn’t told them to expect a masked host. “When you’d joined us I meant to reveal my face,” Nobodaddy snarled, close to losing self-control.
Quentin grinned. “For someone who believes in nothing, you ask for big leaps of faith.”
Nobodaddy watched the art critic go. Nobodaddy stood alone in the room, staring at empty chairs.
Well, soul winning wasn’t an easy task, particularly when you were trying to win converts to a faith as black and pitiless as this one.
But there had been successes. The “church,” for lack of a better word, was growing — those
who’d just left would probably use another word...maybe “festering.”
But a dark course had been charted.
It was just a matter of staying true to that plan and vision. If Nobodaddy couldn’t win them over — all the artists, all the opinion shapers in the artistic community of the City of Lights — well, then Nobodaddy and his minions would just continue pitching them into that black void, one at a time.
Maybe one couldn’t kill them all, but one could surely try.
After all, God was dead; actions no longer carried consequences.
PART I
vendredi, samedi & dimanche
1
Hector took the mail handed him by his femme de ménage and sorted it. He opened two envelopes from magazine publishers in the states and found two checks — each made out for several stories. It was enough to carry Hector well through the fall...not that he was as hard-pressed for money as so many other writers in the Quarter.
Germaine LeBrun handed him a café au lait and he sipped it gratefully. She said, “It is good news?”
“It is very good news,” Hector said, sipping again and winking. He took out his fountain pen and signed one of the checks over to his landlady and kissed her cheek. “So you won’t have to set me out.”
“You’re not even late,” she said, touching her cheek where he had had kissed it. She was an older woman and stocky and she had appointed herself his surrogate mother, Hector thought, though she was closer in age to his grandmother, if he still had one.
“This will ensure we stay on our good footing,” he said.
He climbed back up to his room, carrying the breakfast tray she had prepared for him: eggs over easy, toast and bacon, and a cup of yogurt. She’d also added a flask filled with more of the strong coffee Hector favored. He smothered his eggs in salt and pepper and dug in, reading a couple of newspapers while he ate.
Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 24